KITTREDGE, J.: Brentley Blalock was tried
on two counts of criminal sexual conduct with a minor. Blalock was acquitted
on one count and convicted on the second count. Blalock appeals his conviction,
arguing the trial judge committed reversible error by allowing the state to
present extrinsic evidence in connection with a prior inconsistent statement
by his wife, Lee Blalock. We affirm, finding the trial court did not abuse its
discretion in admitting the evidence. [1]

On July 11, 2000, 14-year-old
Jane Smith [3] and her family
visited the home of their neighbors, Brentley and Lee Blalock. After passing
the afternoon with the Blalocks, the Smiths returned to their nearby home.
Jane, however, asked and was allowed to stay for a while longer. Brentley Blalock,
Lee Blalock, one of their sons, and Jane continued watching television and “playing
around” in the living room. After a while, Ms. Blalock left the room to take
care of some chores in the adjacent kitchen. During this time, Jane claimed
Brentley Blalock committed a sexual battery upon her.

At the center of this appeal is a statement Ms.
Blalock provided to a police detective investigating the incident on the evening
of July 11, 2000. In the statement, transcribed by the detective, Ms. Blalock
described what she saw that night. In the critical portion of the narrative,
Ms. Blalock reportedly said that when she returned from the kitchen to the living
room she “saw [Jane] laying on her stomach in front of the T.V. Brentley [Blalock]
was sitting beside her. I noticed he had his hand under her pants leg on her
backside.”

At trial, the prosecution called Ms. Blalock as
a witness and examined her regarding what she saw on July 11, 2000 – focusing
primarily on her statement to the police detective. Initially, however, the
solicitor did not confront her with the exact words recorded in the statement.
Instead, the solicitor characterized Ms. Blalock’s statement in different terms—adding
and deleting key words and changing the order of the words.

The solicitor first asked Ms. Blalock whether she
saw her “husband’s hand under [Jane’s] pants and on her bottom.” The solicitor’s
substitution of the word “pants” for “pants leg” and “bottom” for “backside”
contributed to the confusion that would follow. Ms. Blalock answered “no” and
attempted to explain:

I did not see his hand on her
butt per se, just for lack of a better word. When I walked in, they were fine,
looking at television. She had shorts on that were what would have been acceptable
for school. Her parents didn’t allow her to wear teenybopper type clothes.
So, they were kind of long and I did see his hand underneath her shorts on her
leg.

Ms. Blalock apparently then tried to correct the
solicitor’s misquotation of her statement, explaining that “in my statement,
it says on her back side.” Before Ms. Blalock could continue, however, the
solicitor protested to the court that she was being “non-responsive” and asked
for permission to “take her as a hostile witness to impeach her under Rule 607,”
which was allowed.

The solicitor then presented Ms. Blalock
with a copy of her statement and had her read aloud the sentences quoted above.
Again, when asked to confirm or deny the statement, Ms. Blalock instead tried
to explain: “I’m saying that maybe some of the details are missing [from the
statement]. Just like you pointed out with Jane, a few minutes ago, all of
the details were not included. When you’re upset in a time like that, you don’t
think to include everything.”

After further questioning, the solicitor
returned to the statement a third time, but once again the solicitor changed
the actual wording, asking Ms. Blalock: “You saw his hand on her back side under
her pants?” Ms. Blalock again attempted explanation, responding:

A. [Ms. Blalock] Her back
side of her leg. That’s another thing that was left out.

Q. [Solicitor] Okay.
And when did you come up with that? When did you realize that was missing?

A. That was sometime after
the, all the reports were gone and I had time to think over things in my mind,
and when I was more clear headed so I could remember more of the details of
what went on.

After a break in the testimony, the solicitor revisited
the statement a final time.

Q. [Solicitor] Mrs. Blalock,
I want to show you your statement again, if I may, so that there’s no misunderstanding.
Okay?

A. [Ms. Blalock] (Witness
nods affirmatively.)

Q. Did you say Brentley
was sitting beside her, and I noticed he had his hand under her pants leg on
her back side?

A. I said that portion,
and for whatever reason, the detail of, of her leg, the back side, was left
out.

Q. All right. So that’s
what you --?

A. But that portion, yes.

Q. Okay. Did you ever
tell anybody back side of her leg until court today?

A. Well, I thought that
I did.

Q. Okay. Who would you
have told?

A. Detective Lindsey and
cops or whoever else --.

Q. When would you have told
Detective Lindsey?

A. -- that may have been
there.

Q. I mean you are saying
it happened that night you told him after you signed it or the following week?
When did you do this?

A. It would have been at
the time of the statement.

Q. Okay. So, again, when
you said that, on the back side, you, at that time, you would of told him of
her leg?

A. I feel like I said that.
If I didn’t, you know, I may have been unclear about it or he may of, you know,
been paraphrasing what I was saying.

Immediately following this colloquy, the solicitor
attempted to offer the statement into evidence but withdrew the offer after
defense counsel requested a bench conference.

The State next called William Lindsey,
the police investigator who took Ms. Blalock’s statement. When the State sought
to publish the statement through Detective Lindsey, defense counsel objected,
citing Rule 613(b), SCRE. The trial court overruled the objection and Ms. Blalock’s
prior inconsistent statement was published.

Blalock argues the trial
court erred by admitting extrinsic evidence of his wife’s prior statement to
impeach her trial testimony. The State claims this issue is not preserved for
appellate review. We disagree on both counts.

Here, defense counsel promptly objected when the
State sought to introduce extrinsic evidence of Ms. Blalock’s prior statement.
First, the court promptly replied by referencing Rule 613(b), and the state
withdrew the exhibit. Next, when Detective Lindsey was asked to publish Ms.
Blalock’s statement, defense counsel objected by reference to Rule 613(b).
We find this evidentiary objection properly preserved. We have no difficulty
discerning the issue from the targeted references by the trial court and defense
counsel to Rule 613(b) and the context from which this issue arose.

Rule 613(b), SCRE, provides
in pertinent part:

Extrinsic evidence of a prior
inconsistent statement by a witness is not admissible unless the witness is
advised of the substance of the statement, the time and place it was allegedly
made, and the person to whom it was made, and is given the opportunity to explain
or deny the statement. If a witness does not admit that he has made the prior
inconsistent statement, extrinsic evidence of such statement is admissible.

The central question,
therefore, is whether Ms. Blalock admitted making an inconsistent statement
in her testimony. As described above, however, Ms. Blalock’s testimony affords
little in the way of a clear admission or denial. At various points in her
testimony, she concedes that the material portions of the statement were in
fact her own words; but she is simultaneously eager to explain and amend her
words and intent. Overall, Ms. Blalock appears to have reacted as would be
expected of anyone who realizes he or she has been called as the star witness
against his or her spouse: self-conscious, confused, and wary of how her testimony
will be perceived by the jury.

In determining whether
a witness has admitted making a prior inconsistent statement and thereby obviated
the need for extrinsic proof, the courts of our state and other jurisdictions
have held that the witness must admit making the prior statement unequivocally
and without qualification. SeeState v. Bottoms, 260 S.C. 187,
194, 195 S.E.2d 116, 118 (1973) (when a witness “admits unequivocally” that
a prior inconsistent statement has been made by him, he has thereby impeached
himself and further evidence is unnecessary and inadmissible); 98 C.J.S. Witnesses
§ 727 (2002) (stating admission must be “unequivocal”).

Generally, where the witness
has responded with anything less than an unequivocal admission, trial courts
have been granted wide latitude to allow extrinsic evidence proving the statement.
For example, a witness’s failure to fully recall her prior statement has been
found to be a sufficient denial to allow extrinsic evidence. State v. Brown,
296 S.C. 191, 193, 371 S.E.2d 523, 524 (1988); State v. Miller, 262 S.C.
369, 371, 204 S.E.2d 738, 738-39 (1974); 81 Am. Jur. 2d Witnesses § 948
(2003) (stating that a “witness may be impeached by proof of prior contradictory
statements, where he merely testifies that he does not remember, or has no recollection
of, making the statements referred to”). Extrinsic evidence is also usually
admitted when the witness simply avoids any direct answer. Confronted with
this situation in State v. Sullivan, our supreme court held:

If the witness neither directly
admit [sic] nor deny [sic] the act or declaration, as when he merely says that
he does not recollect, or, as it seems, gives any other indirect answer not
amounting to an admission, it is competent for the adversary to prove the affirmative,
for otherwise the witness might in every such case exclude evidence of what
he had done or said by answering that he did not remember.

43 S.C. 205, 211, 21 S.E
4, 7 (1895).

In this case, we find
Ms. Blalock’s response, when confronted with her prior statement, does not meet
the standard of a clear and unequivocal admission that the precedent case law
demands. We are mindful that, towards the end of the solicitor’s examination
of Ms. Blalock regarding the statement, she does admit that she said the “portion”
of the statement quoted. She is adamant throughout her testimony, however,
that the statement as recorded by the detective was incomplete. As demonstrated
in the excerpted testimony above, Ms. Blalock repeatedly insists that she did
not merely say she saw her husband’s hand on Jane’s “backside,” but that she
saw his hand on the “back side of her leg.” When the solicitor presses her
on when and to whom she said “back side of her leg,” Ms. Blalock testifies that
she “feel[s] like” that is what she told Detective Lindsey at the time he took
her statement. Ultimately, she equivocates as to whether the statement was
in fact her own words, testifying that she may have been “unclear” or that Detective
Lindsey had “paraphrased” what she said.

Clearly, by repeatedly
insisting that she said or intended to say “back side of her leg” instead of
“backside,” Ms. Blalock was attempting to dispel the implication that she actually
saw Brentley Blalock’s hand on or near Jane’s genital area. This disparity,
therefore, goes to the essential meaning of what Detective Lindsey recorded
as Ms. Blalock’s statement. The entire probative value of Ms. Blalock’s statement
and trial testimony hinges on where she saw her husband’s hand on Jane’s body.
Considered in toto, Ms. Blalock’s testimony regarding her statement shrouds
its meaning in doubt. Admission of extrinsic evidence to prove Ms. Blalock
made the statement was therefore relevant to the jury’s consideration of the
veracity of Ms. Blalock as a witness and the consequent weight her testimony
should be afforded.

We respectfully reject
Blalock’s position that State v. Lynn compels a different result. First,
we are confronted with a different factual presentation. We do not believe
Ms. Blalock’s varying responses rise to the level of the unequivocal admission,
as was present in Lynn, necessary to foreclose resort to extrinsic evidence.
Second, as noted above, a significant feature in Lynn is the holding
that “the cross-examination of a witness to test his credibility is largely
within the discretion of the trial judge, and his decision whether to allow
the contradictory testimony will not be disturbed on appeal except for manifest
abuse of discretion.” State v. Lynn 277 S.C. at 225, 284 S.E.2d at 788.
Considering we are governed by an abuse of discretion standard, we cannot say
under these facts that the trial judge erred in admitting extrinsic evidence
of Ms. Blalock’s prior inconsistent statement. Moreover, Detective Lindsey’s
publication of the prior statement was cumulative to Ms. Blalock’s previous,
unchallenged publication of the relevant portion of her statement.

As a final observation,
we acknowledge Blalock’s concern with the conduct of the solicitor and his role
in fostering the present controversy. We are persuaded, however, that Ms. Blalock’s
varying responses cannot be solely attributed to the solicitor’s paraphrasing
of the prior statement.